I have recently retired after being a maths teacher for 35 years. I am interested in finding out what has happened in my subject since I was a student in the early 70's. I am particularly interested in finite algebra and combinatorics. How can I find other people like myself to correspond with and what are good books to start reading?

Unlike Bruce, I would not recommend the arxiv: it's a great repository, and works wonderfully when you know what you're looking for, but I doubt you would get much joy from just browsing it. These days, it seems like blogs are the way to go for good exposition. In addition to Wilf's blog, I would recommend the ones by Terry Tao and Gil Kalai. If you're into computational complexity aspects at all, you might also want to check out the blogs by Dick Lipton and the joint one of Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch. No links really needed; Google ought to lead you straight to them.
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Thierry ZellAug 24 '11 at 14:47

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As blog recomendations go: Tim Gowers also writes a great blog gowers.wordpress.com, his work is related to combinatorics. You should also look at the mathematical discussions on his webpage dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10 maybe reading Two culures of mathematics where he writes about Combinatorics
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sisnAug 24 '11 at 17:41

A good reference for combinatorics on words is the book Automatic Sequences: Theory, Applications, Generalizations by J.-P. Allouche and J. Shallit (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
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Joel Reyes NocheAug 25 '11 at 0:28

Perhaps try to found an informal mailing list for mathematicians similar to you, with maybe a local meetup group. See if creating such a group via social networking sites helps.

Maybe send emails to math departments, telling them about your "math club", and request them to circulate it to the target group of mathematicians you want to connect with. This requires heavy emailing, and the results will be sparse, but not zero.

Hurray for #3. At times, MO can play the part of tea hour in a good math department, when you can get just the shove in the right direction after you've stumbled onto something that's been bothering you in your readings. Don't be shy!
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Thierry ZellAug 24 '11 at 19:20

Gerhard Paseman suggested that I post the comments I made to his post as an answer. I will edit it a bit.)

I suggest that a blog with theme exactly the question of maths in retirement might be quite fun to do.
My experience is that some of the web activity which I am involved with is not being done only by full time professional mathematicians. The other contributors have good mathematical credentials and may be retired, out of work(!), or have another job which does not fully fulfill their mathematical interests and they can thus be freer to contribute when the political pressures of having to publish work might otherwise dominate. People who have retired whether from (school) teaching, from lecturing or from industrial mathematics have experience and knowledge that if pooled could be useful for everyone.

As some of you may know, I was `retired' by my university closing the mathematics section in the University of Bangor, but I still do a lot of research and contribute to the n-Lab etc. Retirement does not mean that you stop doing maths if you want to (we all know it is an addiction!) or if your background is in secondary school teaching or in business or industrial mathematics,, that you can not start building up mathematical activity of various sorts. I would not know how to start such a blog, so will not volunteer to do so, but would encourage others to try it out. The exchange of ideas problems etc. could produce some very interesting results.

In addition to reading weblogs, as some comments have suggested, you should consider starting your own blog.. If you are discreet about it, you could place the occasional link to your writings in other places. At some point your audience will select your writings and can become the correspondents you desire.

Addition: Tim Porter suggested what I think is an excellent theme for your new blog, 'Mathematics In Retirement'. He didn't tell me where he got the idea though. End Addition.

I was going to suggest that a blog with theme exactly the question of maths in retirement might be quite fun to do.
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Tim PorterAug 24 '11 at 15:44

I think you just did. I will edit my answer to make your suggestion more prominent. Gerhard "Ask Me About Answer Improvement" Paseman, 2011.08.24
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Gerhard PasemanAug 24 '11 at 15:56

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My point was that some of the web activity which I am involved with is not being done only by full time professional mathematicians. The others have good mathematical credentials and may be retired, out of work(!), or have another job which does not fully fulfill their mathematical interests and they can be freer to contribute when the political pressures of having published work might dominate otherwise. People who have retired whether from (school) teaching or from lecturing have experience and knowledge that pooled could be great for everyone. – Tim Porter 0 secs ago
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Tim PorterAug 24 '11 at 17:31

Sounds good. I think it would be good if you posted those as a separate answer. I don't mind the extra traffic if you decide to keep them as comments here. Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.08.24
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Gerhard PasemanAug 24 '11 at 18:07